Diolch i Adam Price am y cwestiynau manwl hynny. A diolch am beth y dywedodd ar y dechrau am groesawu nifer o bethau yn y fframwaith. Rwy’n mynd i droi at y cwestiynau nawr.

As far as Barnett is concerned, the figure of 115 per cent is within the 114 to 117 per cent range of Holtham; it’s the figure that Holtham himself most often uses in describing the extent to which Welsh needs exceed those of our colleagues across the border. The most fundamental part of this agreement is not simply the figure itself, it is the recognition that those needs exist and it is making sure that they are fixed in the way the funding will flow between the Treasury and Wales into the future.

As to the block grant adjustment, it’s very important, Dirprwy Lywydd, to see the fiscal framework in the round. There are a number of complex and interlocking parts of it. We looked very carefully at whether or not it was possible to discover a mutually agreeable comparator for SDLT and it’s partly because there were some technical problems with that, which the Treasury felt they were unable to solve, that we’ve ended up with the Barnett multiplier of 105 per cent within the agreement. There are checks and balances within it. I think it’s important to say to Members that we shouldn’t automatically assume that receipts in Wales from land transaction tax will lag behind SDLT receipts in England. The Office for Budget Responsibility, in its November forecast for the autumn statement, assumes that SDLT receipts in Wales will more than double between 2015-16 and 2021-22, while estimating that, in the rest of the UK, the increase in receipts will be around 50 per cent. So, it’s by no means inevitable that the differences between Wales and the rest of the UK will be to our detriment. If they turn out to be to our detriment, then the Barnett multiplier is there to provide a corrective and to ensure that Wales is protected from any such adverse consequences.

There were a number of questions that the Member asked about the way in which disputes within the framework will be negotiated and the role of independent oversight in that. The framework sets out a step-up process in which, if there are issues that are identified by either side within the framework, the first step is for those to be worked on at official level, for information to be agreed between Wales and the UK Treasury, and to have those resolved by officials. If that is not possible, then it moves to the Joint Exchequer Committee, where the finance Minister for Wales would sit with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and those disputes are to be resolved there. If failure to resolve the issues happens at the Joint Exchequer Committee, then there is further recourse to those dispute resolution mechanisms set out in the devolution guidance notes. At all points in that process, there are independent rights for both Governments to deploy independent advice, which both Governments can independently secure. And that’s a very important breakthrough; we’ve never had that before. And in many ways, we were reliant on the grounds that the Scots had won in negotiating their fiscal framework, because they secured that in their agreement, we were able to point to that and say that we weren’t able to settle for anything less.

If, in the end, there is no agreement between the two Governments, then the status quo prevails. Now, you may say that that could mean that there will be adverse circumstances for Wales, where we could not persuade the Treasury, but from my point of view, more importantly, in a set-up where power is not equally distributed on both sides of the table, that means that the Treasury is no longer able, by its own unilateral decisions, to impose anything on Wales. And so it is a power that cuts both ways, but I think it will be more significant in our hands than it would be in the Treasury’s.